Only those in wealthy neighborhoods had the resources to stave off Elon’s tunnel.

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Forgiveness Over Permission

Elon Musk hates traffic. He hates it so much that he founded the Boring Company to dig underground passageways you can travel through to avoid it.

In Hawthorne, Los Angeles, Musk’s Boring Company has been hard at work digging a tunnel 40 feet underground. And, perhaps because Hawthorne is a low-income part of Los Angeles County, The Atlantic reports that the Boring Company has been able to do so without involving or even officially informing the local community.

My Hero!

Musk, who’s drawn comparisons to fictional superhero Tony Stark, got special permission from the LA City Council to circumvent many typical environmental regulations and assessments.

As The Outline reported in May, LA County gave the Boring Company permissionto rely solely on its own environmental studies. Additionally, the county approved its tunnelsin small parts — by breaking up the approval process, each tunnel segment became an individual, smaller-scale project subject to looser environmental laws.

That’s how, according to The Atlantic, Hawthorne residents remained totally unaware that the Boring Company was tunneling through the ground beneath their homes.

Tesla on Ice!

This tunnel won’t actually benefit the people of Hawthorne, even with The Boring Company’s weird garage elevator. That’s because, aside from vague promises to connect these tunnels to public transit systems, its intended use will be to shuttle people and their cars from point A to point B on high-speed skates.

So for the people of Hawthorne who had the rug pulled out from under them, the crowded highway that Musk hates so much will probably still be the only option.